On ‘The Americans,’ Weaponized Sex Has Its Price

This show hasn’t been shy about using sex as a weapon. Philip carried on an affair with Analese to gain entry into the Secretary of Defense’s home.

This episode really showcased the price women pay for these encounters. From Nina going beyond simple flirting to Elizabeth taking punishment, women were using their sexuality as a way to gain an advantage. But at what did it cost them?

Elizabeth, posing as a security official, checks in on an anti-ballistics program contractor/widower. In 35 years of marriage, he says he never told his wife about his high-security clearance job and never stepped outside his marriage. What she was really doing was subvertly interviewing a KGB contact who seemed to be losing his will and needed face time with his handler. KGB handlers were on high alert because they’d been closely watched by the FBI. Elizabeth tells Claudia that the contact, Uchada, would have cracked in seconds had she pushed him.

After Elizabeth leaves, Uchada calls his handler, Vasili from the Soviet embassy. The FBI picks up the call and learns that a contact is spinning and could be ready to jump ship. Beeman, who’s obviously catching feelings for Nina, tells his “beautiful, intelligent and intuitive” spy that she can find out what’s going on. In Russian, he tells Nina to trust him, but his intonation makes him sound like it’s a demand, not a request.

Nina takes Beeman’s words to heart and seduces Vasili, who in turn casually tells her that one of his contacts has “jitters.” When Beeman asks her how she found all this out, she bluntly tells him how she serviced Vasili. A shocked Beeman looks like he wants to hurt Vasili.

Elizabeth has found her latest mark: kinky FBI contractor who builds the encryption cards hidden in the trunk of FBI vehicles. Elizabeth seduces this intel out of him, but not before a very brief sexual encounter, followed by rough play ending with Elizabeth cowering in a corner screaming for him to stop hurting her. He shushes her, and she turns to dress with a smirk on her face

Philip is stunned at the lashings on Elizabeth’s back. He joins Beeman in going into alpha mode, saying he’s going to deal with it. Elizabeth is justifiably insulted and furious that he would think she couldn’t handle the situation herself. “If I’d wanted to deal with him, you don’t think he’d be dealt with?” she asks him. Though Elizabeth was put into a degrading situation, she took it to be part of the job. She tells him that she doesn’t need him to be her daddy, alluding to him taking down the man who hit on Paige at the mall.

Philip and Elizabeth pick a mini fight in the car while on a mission. Philip, who had earlier given Henry a hard time about losing his thermos, was still mad that he couldn’t “deal” with the S&M man. She snipes at him and he slams on the brakes, causing an FBI agent to get in an accident and go to a repair shop. Philip, in disguise, is there getting his car fixed. While both cars are on lifts, Elizabeth deftly escapes Philip’s trunk, crosses over to the FBI’s car and slides into the trunk. Before she can escape with the encryption card, the FBI’s car is fixed and the agents drive off with her. Elizabeth is able to escape once the car is parked at FBI headquarters and she walks out with a “See ya,” to the security guards. Philip is waiting for her with coffee and donuts.

Beeman, who hasn’t spent much time at home because of his new hunting-spies job, is continuing his foreign-language lessons by practicing at the table. His wife, wearing sexy black negligee, asks him to come to bed. Sandra tries to get him to remember the good times they used to have, like line dancing. He’d rather learn Russian to impress Nina.

Poor Nina. All she wanted was to send some money back home to her family. Now she’s been pulled into the spy world by the FBI and is using her “beauty and intelligence” to make a small man feel big. She tells Beeman about the encryption code and Vasili’s scheduled meeting with his contact.

The FBI gets the codes changed, and the KGB realize they have a mole. Vasili leaves the Soviet embassy still intent on meeting with Uchada, we’re led to believe. Really, he’s leading the FBI away from the meeting point so that Elizabeth can shoot Uchada in the head. Again, Elizabeth is nothing if not efficient.

Side thoughts:

* Isn’t completely obvious to the KGB that Nina is the mole? How much time does she have left on the show? It seems that she was the only person with Vasili when things went wrong, so he should be able to put two and two together.

* Alpha male behavior wasn’t limited to Beeman and Philip. Amador openly sexually harasses Martha at the office. Agent Gaad, for Martha’s benefit, gives Amador the requisite speech about how that behavior isn’t allowed, all while rolling his eyes.

* Claudia touts the strength of Russian versus American women. American women were asking for equal rights whereas Soviets knew you had to take them and claim them every day of the year, she says. Would Nina have had to stoop to the level she’s at now if she were still in Russia? And what about Elizabeth’s rights as a trainee? Could she still have claimed them while her trainer had her pinned to the floor and was raping her?

* How awesome were Keri Russell’s spy skills? She was given the brunt of the work to do this episode, both emotionally and physically. From going undercover twice to even using her “Mission: Impossible” skills to slide from one car trunk to another, she carried a lot of “COMINT’s” weight well.

* A quick Wikipedia search showed the COMINT stands for communications intelligence, a kind of intel gathered by intercepting signals between people. Were all the signals read clearly tonight?

So what did you think? Was sex as a weapon a good tool in this episode? Will Beeman get over his infatuation with Nina, because that’s obviously not going anywhere? Will Philip continue to parade around sans shirt to proclaim his alpha maleness? Leave your thoughts below in the comments section.